Cuban Riots Hit 2nd U.s. Prison

30 Held Hostage, Fires Rage In Atlanta

November 24, 1987|By George de Lama, Chicago Tribune.

ATLANTA — Cuban inmates facing deportation rioted and took over a federal prison here Monday, taking an estimated 30 guards hostage and setting fire to large sections of the facility in the nation`s second violent uprising of imprisoned Cubans in two days.

Shots were heard from within the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on several occasions during the day. There were unconfirmed reports that one inmate was killed and at least 30 persons had been injured. At least eight inmates were taken out of the prison with gunshot wounds and two guards were treated at local hospitals for minor injuries.

The rioters pressed their revolt despite an offer from Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese for a ``moratorium`` on their repatriation to Cuba pending review of their individual cases. Meese conditioned his offer of a moratorium on ``the fair and humane treatment`` of correctional officers being held as hostages and a quick end to the disturbances.

Meese`s offer also was relayed to Cuban inmates at the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, La., who seized hostages and set fires at that institution over the weekend. They were demanding freedom in the United States and assurances that they would not be prosecuted for the uprising. They threatened to kill 25 hostages if authorities tried to retake the prison.

The inmates in Atlanta and Oakdale rioted in reaction to a State Department announcement Friday that Cuba had agreed to accept the return of 2,500 refugees from the 1980 Mariel boatlift.

Insisting they would rather die than be returned to communist Cuba under the agreement, the inmates in Atlanta took over major sections of the prison Monday and dug in for a long siege.

Thick black smoke engulfed the sprawling penitentiary for hours after the disturbance began Monday morning, as inmates reportedly armed with homemade knives and captured guns set at least three separate fires and vowed they would kill their hostages if authorities stormed the facility.

FBI sharpshooters, local and state police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel kept a tense vigil outside the burning prison while federal authorities tried to negotiate an end to the stalemate with ringleaders of the uprising.

At one point in the daylong standoff, a guard within the penitentiary was overheard shouting on a police radio frequency: ``I`ll shoot every goddamned one of you.``

Monday evening, a local television reporter who attended a negotiating session inside the prison, said inmates sought assurances that authorities would not retaliate for the uprising.

The reporter, Marc Pickard, also said the prisoners were ``having trouble believing`` Meese`s offer of a moratorium on detentions.

Georgia National Guard and Georgia Forestry Department helicopters dangling open-ended 2,000-gallon tanks scooped water from a nearby lake and flew over the prison`s burning industrial shop, dropping their payloads on the fire in more than a dozen sorties Monday afternoon.

But inmates set at least two new blazes in the prison mess hall and infirmary shortly before sundown, and authorities allowed the fires to burn brightly into the night.

Confusion reigned for hours outside the prison walls as federal prison officials and law enforcement authorities refused to provide details of the situation inside.

Across the street, anxious relatives of some of the 1,392 Cuban inmates and roughly 200 American prisoners held in the facility awaited the outcome.

The rioting inmates, all of whom came to the United States during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, are among more than 2,500 Cubans being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as ``excludable`` aliens eligible for deportation.

Under the U.S.-Cuban immigration agreement first negotiated in 1984, then suspended by Cuban Presdident Fidel Castro and finally renewed last week, the U.S. is allowed to deport all Cubans from the boatlift who arrived with mental problems or criminal records, as well as those who subsequently broke the law in this country.

Some of the Cubans in the federal pentitentiary here had been imprisoned without trials since the day they arrived in the U.S. after they were judged to have had criminal records in Cuba.

Others who had been convicted of crimes in this country have been detained long after serving their original sentences.

The uprising began around 9:20 a.m. Chicago time, when one group of about 20 Cuban inmates reportedly tried to escape by climbing the prison walls as another group of inmates began a disturbance in the industrial shop, where prisoners construct mattresses and brooms, authorities said.

Shortly after the industrial shop went up in flames, at least three separate factions of inmates began to communicate with one another over captured hand-held radios in what appeared to be a well-organized revolt.

The three factions of inmates, many of whom are believed to have served in the Cuban armed forces before coming to this country, could be heard talking among themselves in Spanish throughout the day.